To be brave in misfortune is to be worthy of manhood; to be wise in misfortune is to conquer fate.
AGNES REPPLIERIt takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.
More Agnes Repplier Quotes
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People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.
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the tea-hour is the hour of peace … strife is lost in the hissing of the kettle – a tranquilizing sound, second only to the purring of a cat.
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The sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience.
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Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.
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People who pin their faith to a catchword never feel the necessity of understanding anything.
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It is in his pleasure that a man really lives.
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English civilization rests largely upon tea and cricket, with mighty spurts of enjoyment on Derby Day, and at Newmarket.
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What puzzles most of us are the things which have been left in the movies rather than the things which have been taken out.
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whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between himself and man, seeks ever to be intelligent and intelligible, and translates into looks and actions the words he cannot speak, the cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.
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The age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.
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There are many ways of asking a favor; but to assume that you are granting the favor that you ask shows spirit and invention.
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It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything.
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Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.
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real letter-writing … is founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that one human being has of another.
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It is not begging but the beggar, who has forfeited favor with the elect.
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Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
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It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.
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Who that has plodded on to middle age would take back upon his shoulders ten of the vanished years, with their mingled pleasures and pains? Who would return to the youth he is forever pretending to regret?
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There is an optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral laws, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates unworthiness.
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I am seventy years old, a gray age weighted with uncompromising biblical allusions. It ought to have a gray outlook, but it hasn’t, because a glint of dazzling sunshine is dancing merrily ahead of me.
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There is a vast deal of make-believe in the carefully nurtured sentiment for country life, and the barefoot boy, and the mountain girl.
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The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.
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Woman is quick to revere genius, but in her secret soul she seldom loves it.
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The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.
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The man who never tells an unpalatable truth ‘at the wrong time’ (the right time has yet to be discovered) is the man whose success in life is fairly well assured.
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Wit is artificial; humor is natural. Wit is accidental; humor is inevitable. Wit is born of conscious effort; humor, of the allotted ironies of fate. Wit can be expressed only in language; humor can be developed sufficiently in situation.
AGNES REPPLIER